Adorable free iPhone app to teach children basic Chinese pictographs. Cracks me up. Should help me learn a few Hanja. Comes with Korean as one of the languages, so you can see the Chinese and Korean together.

Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese. In Mandarin Chinese they are called hanzi; in Japanese, they are called kanji; in Korean they are called hanja; and in Vietnamese, there are called chữ Nôm.

A pictogram, also called a pictograph, conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. (人 “person” and 木 “tree”)

A simple ideogram, also called an ideograph, conveys meaning through a direct icon that illustrates an idea or concept. For example, a character representing the idea of “up”. (上 shàng “up”) Pictograms and ideograms make up only a small portion of Chinese characters.

A compound ideogram conveys an idea by combining two or more pictographic or ideographic characters to suggest a third meaning. Example: 休 “rest” (composed of the pictograms 人 “person” and 木 “tree”).

It occurs to me that I need to learn how to look up Chinese characters in a dictionary. However, Chinese characters were MUCH easier to quickly scan.